It has been a while since I have last made an update on Alpha, I've been busy with school exams and studies and yadda yadda. I am submitting this project soon, and I'd like some feedback on existing work so far.

Please post any bugs & problems (I will include a guide later, but just have a play around for now. Remember the dialog module in Beta is still a WIP!)

Thanks!

3 months has passed since the project started, I'm still busy working on the Scene Maker part of the animator. Currently I have just finished the entity module, which makes 3 module complete (tileset, scene and entity).

The scene is working fine in Alpha, and there's an update video too in the last post since embedding too many YouTube videos on one page isn't kinda nice.

Another screenshot to show the entity module, here I customize the movement animation of riolu walking right.

And the last one, showing how users select the right frame size for their entities:

This is it for now. Visit the last post for the update video, visit Alpha's website for source code (And you can clone it and get it early :p). Stay tuned for more!

Original Post Below

Alpha is a flexible animation library based on Slick2D

PreludeA few weeks ago I was sifting through YouTube videos as usual. Until I came across some videos spoiling the ending of Pokemon Mystery Dungeons: Red Rescue Team and Explorers of the Sky. I was always fond of PMD games, but I either can't be bothered finishing it or they are always too hard.

After watching the videos, they literally brought me to tears with the twist in the storyline and separation of two buddies. That night was unforgettable, and I've decided to work on a scene animator ever since.

Alpha isn't just an animator for Pokemon. It works for any 2D top-down games as long as you got the graphics for it... At least that's what I'm aiming to do

About

Scene Animator Alpha, or Alpha for short, is a lightweight slick2D animation library. The goal for this project is to dynamically generate 2D top-down game scenes for either stand alone enjoyment or game intro/outros (which would require alpha to be embedded into a JFrame using CanvasGameContainer).

The focus on Alpha is to make it as dynamic as possible, which means that users can:

Manually define entities with different width, height and textures

Manually define tile textures, ids and animation for tiles (for tiles such as water & lava)

Create your own scenes in games, or for your own game, with the entities you made, map you made etc.

Create custom animations for separate entities

And much more!

The project is designed in Java and will eventually come with 2 jar files: One is the scene player, which plays the scenes in the projects folder. The other being a GUI scene maker (which is still in early stages of development), allowing the users to create custom scenes with ease.

Most of the project files in the hierarchy are XML files which are straightforward to edit, and Alpha will use its own custom 'Alpha Script' to animate and assemble everything. The script will come with good examples and detailed documentation.

Currently alpha is still in early stages of development, but an 'alpha' for Alpha is going to be out soonish. I'll keep this updated, but in the mean time follow @DeathJockey on Twitter for more screenshots!

Here's a video I uploaded a few days ago showcasing the entity movements I've done:

Why do you have a @ before every single command? You could parse it just as easily without it.

Haha, finally someone replied to this thread. I'm working quite hard on it and I think people can expect a release soonish.

The reason I'm having an @ before every command is so that it denotes that it is a command statement. There will be other types of statements such as # (for comment) and $ (for internal variables) and I suppose having a '@' is like a lazy man's way of checking if that line is a statement because all I have to do is:

Exactly, that is another way of doing so. Personally I prefer to go with an @ symbol, it sort of indicates that it is something meaningful. I mean, having some special statements with prefixes and most doesn't isn't a good look

Quick Progress UpdateSo right now I've made quite a few statements functional and just recently completed execution of other script files within one script file. Now there are alot of bugs so far, so I'm going to have a bug-squish this week and some of the next.

It shows you how to setup a simple project with SublimeText using a regular Alpha distribution (still no download link just yet) and also some fo the scripting engine, unlike last time, where I had to manually control the entity on-screen using mouse. This time everything is fully animated with SCP scripts... Watch me derp too, I can't believe I'm not familiar with my own script language o.0

The next things on the list are still script related, but I'd love to do some audio stuff soon as well. I hope you guys enjoy and leave any feedback

The project is finally ready to see the community for the first time. Some internal stuff are still being worked out, but some scripting basics are there and I'd like the community to try it out, and give me feedback, submit issues and suggestions on new commands etc.

It requires Java 1.7, and should run without any errors. It might be slower starting up on windows than on macs, but I haven't tested it out on Linux, so if anyone could help me test it, it'd be much appreciated

I'm still working on the wikis, use the example for now and have a play around. Perhaps try setting up your own project with your own folder hierarchy, and submit any bugs found. If something goes wrong when executing the script, post your script contents alongside with the exception you are getting in the console/cmd also.

I understand the fustration with working on scene files and laying down tile IDs, this process will be made much easier when I get the GUI 'scene maker beta' ready.

I've just released pre-release v0.4 of Alpha. This new version features 2 visual changes and a lot of background stuff which you won't notice. You can download it from the Alpha website: http://animatoralpha.tk/

Changelog:

Fonts are now implemented (dynamically loaded)

Fonts can now be drawn or typed to the screen

Support for fade-in and fade-outs at a custom duration and custom color

SCP engine bug fixes

Overall performance fix

Overall stability fix

Smaller issues that is not worth being mentioned fixed

Again I've included an example project. Some feedback, suggestion or criticism would be appreciated Submit any issues on Github or just here.

Haha, thanks, currently I'm just going through Alpha's code and addressing problems and add any other things I feel is necessary. Then I'll work on the scene creator. Aside from that, Alpha's running on Slick2D, so I'm finding as many ways as possible for it to run on different things such as LWJGL, LibGDX etc. (If it is possible).

I just made a short scene using Alpha, I know some animation parts are a bit rough, but that's currently in the to-do list

Alright, so I've released v0.7 of Alpha because I thought you guys might want to fiddle with dialogs and stuff. I think I've included a boilerplate with a rough introduction in 'almost' every single project file. I've also included a shorthand written script document.

Well it sure has been a while before I last made a proper screenshot/video update. I've been doing some work on the 'unseeable' side of this, and I've basically made the code a lot more easier for myself to work with.

So here's a screenshot of parallax, it's a new feature in a scene and you can define multiple parallaxes (parallii?!). I've also uploaded a video but it shows basically the same thing. I'm not going to release v0.8 YET, and perhaps I'll just keep showing progress until 'alpha' is ready. Depends on what you guys think and want

Well I'm working on a GUI editor for Alpha (so that you can create scenes in a user-friendly fashion) at the moment and there won't be any more visual features to Alpha for now, at least not as often. The next version will be out as soon as the scene maker is ready, so... it'll take some time.

Maybe you should have a website where people can post their animations. Like a youtube but specifically for Alpha. there was an awesome website like that a few years back. it was called Animasher if anyone still remembers.

Maybe you should have a website where people can post their animations. Like a youtube but specifically for Alpha. there was an awesome website like that a few years back. it was called Animasher if anyone still remembers.

That could be a possibility, right now you can submit animations under a forum category on the Alpha forums. I'm not expecting any animations yet since it is still extremely early in development and everything is poorly documented :p

It has been a few days and I've been turning my attention to a Scene Maker program that will be distributed alongside with Alpha to ease the creation of animations. With it, you'll no longer have to edit XML files and write custom SCP codes.

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